Everybody's Business Is Nobody's Business: Or, Private Abuses, Public Grievances; Exemplified in the Pride, Insolence, and Exorbitant Wages of Our Women, Servants, Footmen, &c. — John Shaqi
Everybody's Business Is Nobody's Business: Or, Private Abuses, Public Grievances; Exemplified in the Pride, Insolence, and Exorbitant Wages of Our Women, Servants, Footmen, &c.Defoe, Daniel
General
Everybody's Business Is Nobody's Business: Or, Private Abuses, Public Grievances; Exemplified in the Pride, Insolence, and Exorbitant Wages of Our Women, Servants, Footmen, &c.
Defoe, Daniel
Working class
I cannot close this discourse without a gentle admonition and reproof to
some of my own sex, I mean those gentlemen who give themselves
unnecessary airs, and cannot go to see a friend, but they must kiss and
slop the maid; and all this is done with an air of gallantry, and must
not be resented. Nay, some gentlemen are so silly, that they shall carry
on an underhand affair with their friend's servant-maid, to their own
disgrace, and the ruin of many a young creature. Nothing is more base
and ungenerous, yet nothing more common, and withal so little taken
notice of. D-n me, Jack, says one friend to another, this maid of yours
is a pretty girl, you do so and so to her, by G-d. This makes the
creature pert, vain, and impudent, and spoils many a good servant.
What gentleman will descend to this low way of intrigue, when he shall
consider that he has a footboy or an apprentice for his rival, and that
he is seldom or never admitted, but when they have been his tasters; and
the fool of fortune, though he comes at the latter end of the feast, yet
pays the whole reckoning; and so indeed would I have all such silly
cullies served.
If I must have an intrigue, let it be with a woman that shall not shame
me. I would never go into the kitchen, when the parlour door was open.
We are forbidden at Highgate, to kiss the maid when we may kiss the
mistress; why then will gentlemen descend so low, by too much familiarity
with these creatures, to bring themselves into contempt?
I have been at places where the maid has been so dizzied with these idle
compliments that she has mistook one thing for another, and not regarded
her mistress in the least; but put on all the flirting airs imaginable.
This behaviour is nowhere so much complained of as in taverns,
coffeehouses, and places of public resort, where there are handsome bar-
keepers, &c. These creatures being puffed up with the fulsome flattery
of a set of flesh-flies, which are continually buzzing about them, carry
themselves with the utmost insolence imaginable; insomuch, that you must
speak to them with a great deal of deference, or you are sure to be
affronted. Being at a coffeehouse the other day, where one of these
ladies kept the bar, I had bespoke a dish of rice tea; but madam was so
taken up with her sparks, she had quite forgot it. I spake for it again,
and with some temper, but was answered after a most taunting manner, not
without a toss of the head, a contraction of the nostrils, and other
impertinences, too many to enumerate. Seeing myself thus publicly
insulted by such an animal, I could not choose but show my resentment.
Woman, said I, sternly, I want a dish of rice tea, and not what your
vanity and impudence may imagine; therefore treat me as a gentleman and a
customer, and serve me with what I call for: keep your impertinent
repartees and impudent behaviour for the coxcombs that swarm round your
bar, and make you so vain of your blown carcase. And indeed I believe
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